


Home is Behind

by thorin_oakengofuckyourself



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, bilbo baggins is a bloody hero and he deserves a lot more than he got dammit, bilbos got me too just everything about this movie destroys me emotionally dont look at me, follows book canon unfortunately, im sorry i watched the movie again and gandalfs line really struck me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:51:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorin_oakengofuckyourself/pseuds/thorin_oakengofuckyourself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's decided. It'll be very good for you, and most amusing for me."</p><p>Oh, what a mistake those words had been, Gandalf knows now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello  
> guess whos back, back again
> 
> i watched the hobbit again to relieve some sads and ended up making it worse by realising that gandalf probably feels pretty fucking guilty for dragging bilbo along on thorins quest  
> poor love is a shell of himself -- hes not just a changed hobbit hes hardly a hobbit at all  
> id be sad too i feel u bilbo
> 
> but anyway just. take this just take it

Empty.  
That is the first thing that comes to mind as Gandalf the Grey stands -- stoops, rather -- inside the entry hall of Bag-End. Empty and achingly lonely.

Further inside, Bilbo Baggins pads softly around the dusty smial, peeking nervously into every barren room like he expects Smaug himself to come leaping out of a corner to eat him.

Bilbo had spent a few flustered, distressed hours earlier puffing around Hobbiton in pursuit of his furniture and his silver, the latter of which Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had already pilfered, dreadful woman. After getting all he could back, Bilbo had gingerly opened the (now rusted) round door to the smial and nosed his way inside. Dark and dusty, Bag-End was like a tomb. The irony of this was not lost on either occupant.

The silence is the second thing that strikes Gandalf. Bilbo's old smial is like a gaping maw, loud in its crushing silence. It is so quiet, with the daylight pouring in through the dirty windows and little Bilbo's shadow sliding along the walls like a giant, that the wizard can faintly hear Yavanna's song encouraging green things to grow. The Green Lady's loving tune sighs in the wind and nourishes all manner of life in the Shire and promises safety and comfort and love, but even this does nothing to lift Bilbo's spirits.

\---

Softly, Bilbo drops his knapsack by the door and explores a Bag-End relieved of most of its furnishings. He examines this place that is familiar but not quite home anymore, has never been home since he ran out that door after his dwarves.  
It strikes Bilbo that he no longer has a home. He has Bag-End, of course, but he has changed too much for its doilies and dishware and dusty books to ever be enough. Erebor was never his, though he fought and bled for it all the same, and he is banished from its stone halls regardless.  
Home, he realises, was with the company. Home was around a campfire on the road, sleeping in a ring of warmth on prickling stones and trying to block out Bombur's deafening snoring. Home was Bofur's cheeky smile. Home was Fíli and Kíli wrestling after lunch with Thorin looking on in amusement. Home was Balin's skill for storytelling, Dwalin's gift with an axe, Dori's ambition to own a tea shop in the mountain, Glóin waxing nostalgic about his wife and son and Óin bluntly ignoring him.  


Home is behind.  
Home no longer exists.  
Bilbo Baggins is lost.

He understands now why Thorin was so desperate to reclaim the Lonely Mountain.

The hobbit blinks, looks up, and recognizes his fireplace. He is standing in the exact spot where Thorin Oakenshield stood a year ago, smoking his sharp dwarfish pipeweed and muttering darkly about forgotten gold and long-lost homelands.  
Bilbo, awash in sudden grief, is thrust into memory. He hears snatches of dwarfish song in his head as he pads into his larder, empty and dusty and just as they left it. The clinking of Westfarthing china being thrown around his home echoes in the halls, Fíli and Kíli's bright laughter follows him down the way to his room. Balin's reedy "We're with you, laddie" greets him as he enters his study, which is in shambles as usual. Gandalf has taken the liberty of placing Thorin's map in an empty frame on his desk -- the map nobody was supposed to know he nicked, confounded wizard. Bilbo picks up the map with gentle fingers, remembering the look of it in Thorin's hands as he snatched it back from Lord Elrond's slender fingers.

A wan smile crosses the hobbit's face.  
"I should never have gone."

\---

Gandalf hears this and grumbles softly. He remembers the day he entreated Bilbo to come on his silly adventure: "It will be very good for you, and most amusing for me," he had said.  
Foolish, foolish wizard. How very wrong he had been.  
Gandalf peeks in on the little halfling, gripping Thorin's map with shaking fingers and trembling shoulders. It is his fault that Bilbo is so choked by grief as he is now, his fault that the hobbit ever followed out his door. If Gandalf had found someone else, Bilbo Baggins would be sitting down to a nice supper right about now, smiling contentedly, caring nothing for the troubles of some dwarves far to the east and some silly mountain he'd never heard of.

Bilbo fought for a place, a people that were not his own. He joined this quest, not out of loyalty to a king or thirst for adventure or obligation, but out of the simple desire to see that these dwarves had a home again.  
And because the wizard preyed on this nature, Bilbo watched Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli fall to gold lust, watched the dwarves he loved be enthralled by the dragon sickness, bore the suspicion of three races when he bargained a silly stone for the lives of his friends, fought for their home, banished and cast aside and beyond terrified. Because the wizard knew Bilbo had a Tookish streak a mile wide, the hobbit sits collapsed into a flimsy chair, tears streaking down his face, whispering that he wishes he could go back and fix it, make them see sense, make sure they lived.

Gandalf closes the round green door behind him. He is not seen again in the Shire for quite some time, until his fireworks are needed for a certain birthday party.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo's adventure is done. Erebor is reclaimed, and the wandering dwarves of the Blue Mountains have their true home back. But at great cost -- a cost that nobody knows like Bilbo Baggins.  
> Alone in his dusty, vacant smial, he remembers a small thing, a small mistake.
> 
> "I do believe the worst is behind us."
> 
> Silly, foolhardy hobbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somebody asked for me to write about the very last line of the movie, which is bilbos  
> you know the one. the one we ALL groaned at because _dammit, bilbo_
> 
> anyway, im running on like. 5 hours of sleep so i apologise if there are any errors!

Bilbo had been grieving. For months now. He'd slipped inside Bag-End, locked the door, and not come out once, carrying the dull ache of death with him. His cousins and neighbours sometimes stop by, with good hobbit cooking or just to see if he hasn't really died properly this time or if he really does have tunnels filled with gold. Hamfast Gamgee, his ruddy-cheeked and amiable gardener, is around once or twice a week and usually manages to coax Bilbo into eating some of his wife Bell's cooking. And Bilbo is grateful, really he is -- Hamfast is a saint and so is his wife; neither of them pry, just keep him fed -- but soon after his arrival, thinking of nothing but his precious few memories of Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews, he realised something that plunged him into guilt.

He had made a big mistake. He'd said something. A thing that, in hindsight, was the most foolhardy and naive thing he could've possibly said.

Standing on top of the Carrock, bruised and battered but decidedly whole, Bilbo Baggins put his hands in his pockets and proudly proclaimed, "Well, I do believe the worst is behind us."  
True enough, he had just faced down goblins, that horrible creature in the caves, orcs, wargs, and Azog the Defiler himself, and he had finally, _finally_   earned Thorin's trust and, dare he say, respect, but even then. What a silly, ridiculous thing to say.

The worst. Oh, how very wrong he had been.

\--

Bilbo spends a great deal of his time after returning home sifting through his many memories with the company.  
He throws out the bad ones, ignores them but remembers them still -- things like begging them to stop because he forgot a silly hankerchief, of all things, or after they had been rescued from the trolls, when Thorin had reprimanded him rather harshly for giving in to Fíli and Kíli, or the battlements of Erebor and other such -- and he keeps the good ones.  
He keeps the memories of talking with Bombur about recipes, sharing and trading and planning meals together. He keeps the image of Bofur, flute up to his lips, piping out a cheerful tune that prompted most of the others to sing, dance, or pick up their own instruments. Notable among the festivities of that particular peacful night were Fíli and Kíli, who started up a riotous and very intense dance that eventually collapsed into wrestling and giggles. He remembers Thorin's deep, warm laughter. He remembers Óin and Balin telling old stories; they told of the dwarves' history, and it was something they had all likely heard hundreds of times before, but Bilbo was fascinated, so they spent their watch regailing him with tales of the glory of Khazad-dûm and Erebor before the dragon came. He keeps good memories of Dwalin carving a block of wood skillfully and patiently, night after night, a soothing process that lulled him to sleep on his watches. Bilbo keeps good memories of each of his dwarves, and there are many.  
One of the things he keeps is the only hug he ever received from Thorin Oakenshield. And that is when he realises his mistake.

It cuts him to the quick, the breathless invincible buoyancy he felt at that moment, standing on top of a big rock with thirteen ruffled and tired dwarves behind him and good omens winging away towards the distant shadow of the Lonely Mountain. Never mind all the ground left in between them -- they could _see_  Erebor, and that was enough to put Bilbo in wonderful spirits, all things considered. The dwarves were all happy to see their destination, and Bilbo felt the need to voice his sudden optimism.

  
The worst is behind us, indeed.  


Bilbo remembers Beorn's house, their last respite before plunging into Mirkwood and really the last time anyone was genuinely happy on their quest. Before the dragon sickness set in with cold claws that glinted in Thorin's eyes, and made Ori take long breaks from his writing to stare at the mountain, and sharpened Bofur's smile until it was no longer dimpled and sweet, easy, but cold like the edge of a knife, and made Dori -- behold! wonder of all wonders -- forget entirely about his littlest brother for long periods of time.  
He remembers the dark, damp hell that was their extended stay in Mirkwood; the feeling of constantly being watched and his desperate need to see sun and green things, child of Yavanna that he was. He remembers his constant terror, sneaking through the dungeons of the Elvenking; his wretched barrel ride out into Laketown; the sharp-eyed, greedy joy of the men once they realised who his dwarves were and why they were there. He remembers, as clearly as the Ärkenstone's gleam, the first time he set foot in the mountain and came out with a golden cup in his white-knuckled grip. He remembers the damnable gold sickness, and he remembers with a shudder how it took his dwarves away from him. He remembers Thorin -- his Thorin, wonderful, beautiful, stubborn, idiot Thorin -- dangling him off the battlements by his neck and spitting horrible things at him, his eyes ablaze with icy rage. He remembers fighting, and swinging, and killing, all in a desperate haze. He remembers seeing Fíli and Kíli lying together, hands intertwined, a bloody sheet covering their faces. He remembers Thorin's frantic apologies, his desperate need to set things right between them before he passed to Mandos' halls.  
And of course, Bilbo forgave them all of it. He loved his dwarves ever so much.

Looking back on it now, he almost _wishes_ for Azog and his silly desire to wipe out the line of Durin. Back then, things were simple. There was no gold sickness, no looming war or hoard of orcs, and the dragon at the end of the road was still a distant promise, not a very real, fire-breathing, deadly certainty.

\--

Bilbo straightens his back and groans at the satisfying pop that results. He realises that he has been sitting in the rickety chair in his study for hours, Thorin's map clutched in his hands, tear tracks dried on his face. He listens, but Bag-End is empty. Hamfast has gone.

The hobbit rests his head on the back of the chair with a sigh. He rubs at the ever-present ache in his chest in the shape of Thorin and his nephews.

"The worst is just beginning, I think."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my god. i. bilbo  
> my son  
> youre an idiot
> 
> although im sure he doesnt need that from me, hed tell it to himself enough after realising what a fool thing "i do believe the worst is behind us!" is to say

**Author's Note:**

> i made myself cry imagining little bilbo wandering a big empty bag-end and remembering his dwarves
> 
> also!! im so so sorry for the long pause on my avengers happy things, the past month has been awful  
> school is over now though so i shall finish it up promptly, with any luck!


End file.
